George Miller: “in the 20 years I have been in the House, somehow we have visited afternoon like this from time to time when the House…”

“in the 20 years I have been in the House, somehow we have visited afternoon like this from time to time when the House has the incredible ability to be so narrow-minded and so shallow in its thinking, and to be so mean in its spirit. This amendment is not about those materials that fascinate the gentleman at the other table. This amendment is not about whatever the title of the book is, ``Heather's Other Mommy,'' or somebody's roommate. This is not what this is about. This is about using those materials as a pretext to punish and to ostracize a class of people in this country, and to deny them the ability to make the same decisions that we want all of our children and each one of us to make about our futures, about our lives, about our sexuality, about our identity, about our crises. For 10 years this House was nice enough to make me the chairman of the Committee on Children, Youth, and Families. For a long time it was only going to be the Committee on Children and Families, because people here did not want it to carry the title ``youth,'' because youth scare the living hell out of us, adolescence scares us. Fortunately, at that time, the Catholic Church came forward and said they could not support the creation of this committee if it did not include young people, because young people are some of the most troubled and some of the most vulnerable and some of the most at-risk people in our society.…”